Modest is Hottest

Happy Monday to you! Today I'm not talking about the way you dress, I'm talking about humility. In chapter seven of Little Women, we read about a scrape the youngest of the March girls gets herself into. Amy is the only one of the sisters that still goes to school and the latest rage at said school is limes. Well, the teacher had banned them, but Amy managed to get her hands on two dozen juicy, delicious limes to take to school to give and trade among her favored friends. When the aforementioned teacher finds out about it, he punishes her pretty harshly (among other things he makes her throw every single lime out the window--oh the horror!), and Amy leaves school never to return. Seriously. She doesn't go back. She continues her education at home with her sister Beth. 

After she shares all the details of this traumatic incident with her mother and sisters, her mother offers her this beautiful bit of wisdom:

"'I should not have chosen that way of mending a fault,' replied her mother; 'but I'm not sure that it won't do you more good than a milder method. You are getting to be altogether too conceited and important, my dear, and it is quite time you set about correcting it. You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.'"

From chapter 7 ("Amy's Valley of Humiliation") on page 82.

Jesus Himself said, "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

There's not much I can add, and I couldn't possibly say what Marmee said any better. Nobody likes a know-it-all. Stuck-up people don't have many true friends. Even if our good qualities are never noticed by anyone in this world, I hope that the consciousness of possessing and using them well will always satisfy us.